The ethics of scholarly peer review: A review of the literature

Abstract

This review summarizes the literature of a subset of the published research and commentary on peer review - the ethics of peer review. It attempts to track the various ethical issues that arise among the key participants in peer-review systems: authors, editors, referees, and readers. These issues include: bias, courtesy, conflict of interest, redundant publication, honesty, transparency, and training. It concludes that debates over such issues as open vs. blind reviews continue unresolved but that new technologies offer some prospects for resolving old issues while they also may create new challenges.